It is known in the art that benzene can be converted into phenol by a reductive alkylation step forming cyclohexylbenzene followed by oxidation and cleavage steps resulting essentially in phenol and cyclohexanone. Phenol and cyclohexanone, however, form an azeotropic mixture. Therefore, a mixture consisting essentially of cyclohexanone and phenol cannot be separated by simple distillation. In order to produce the pure components, it would therefore be desirable to have a process available by which this mixture of phenol and cyclohexanone can effectively be separated.